Review – Star Wars Illustrated: A New Hope (Trading Cards)

Last month, Topps released Star Wars Illustrated: A New Hope trading cards (Amazon.com search*) and presented a visual adaptation of the old Star Wars radio play. Created in support of the re-release of the radio play, this series of 100+ trading cards — the Topps website has a checklist — is creative and fun. And while it has been many years since I seriously collected trading cards I could see myself trying to chase down the 100 basic cards and a few of the sublines.

An Entertaining Approach

As a kid, my very first encounter with Star Wars on the radio was one night in early 1983 when I accidentally stumbled across The Empire Strikes Back on NPR. I almost instantly understood that Star Wars was on my radio, and I remember being far more excited than I should have been. If you’ve never heard the radio adaptations of the Star Wars films then you’re in for a real treat with this card set; the radio plays dramatically expand on the films and offer several new scenes. Scenes which Topps has illustrated in this set of cards.

Fantastic Artwork!

Shown here are just some of the 24 cards I bought — and not a single duplicate! — and every single one includes great artwork that’s a blend of traditional and digital works. The above cards by Grant Gould (blog) are some of my favorites that I pulled; I love the soft linework Gould uses and it was his artwork more than anything that had me backing his recent Kickstarter project, Blade Raiders Exodus. And, fortunately, every single artist in the set brings their own special style to the cards and each card is fun to look at.

And There Are Words!

And the Star Wars Illustrated: A New Hope trading cards (Amazon.com search*) are more than just beautiful artwork. The back of each card features a small block of text and helps tell the story, moving everything along as each one of the cards provides us with a snapshot of the radio play.

Chase Cards

I already mentioned that there are sublines within the set, and while foil and autograph cards hold no appeal for me, two of the sublines — One Year Earlier (18 cards) and Destroy the Death Star (12 cards) — do sound cool enough that I’d love to track them down. One of the foil cards is shown below — I pulled it from one of the two packs I bought — and it’s attractive, but I think my interest in chasing foil cards died roughly twenty years ago.

Closing Thoughts

With the Star Wars Illustrated: A New Hope trading cards (Amazon.com search*) Topps has created a great new look at the classic film. By adapting the radio play, rather than the movie, the card set offers us completely different scenes and looks at things we haven’t seen before, and the fabulous artwork and heavyweight cards make this a set I feel many Star Wars fans would love to collect.

I’m not likely to get seriously into trading cards again, but I am going to buy a few more packs of these cards the next time I see them in stores. As to whether or not I chase down an entire set . . . well, we’ll have to wait and see what I pull the next time I buy packs. If there aren’t many duplicates I’m likely to go back in for more.

And then more and more and . . .